One of the reasons I immensely prefer posting my clips to my own website and then passing a single link to interested editors is the dreaded spam filter. I don’t know what it is about some of my clips, but they’ve landed my emails in the spam folder on more than one occasion — that is, when my email doesn’t bounce just from size restrictions.

I think Craigslist may have been the straw that finally broke the camel’s back for me: I do find quite a few good opportunities on the site, despite having to wade through more than a few scams along the way. But if I try to attach a file when I’m emailing one of those anonymous Craigslist email addresses, it almost invariably fails. I called it quits a long time ago.

While there are ways to reduce file sizes, there aren’t a lot of ways to avoid an overly protective spam filter. Through trial and error, I’ve settled on a shorter email with no HTML (that means no font or color changes, by the way), as my best hope. I know my emails still occasionally wind up in the spam filter, but I’ve reduced the instances at least a little bit.